This afternoon, Ken Bode, my boss at the Center for Political Reform in 1971-72, emailed me, saying, "I see that the NYT band of analysts finally caught up with you today. I just tell people you were well mentored." Very true. For many decades, Ken has been an amazingly astute observer of American politics. The New York Times reports that “[i]f Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote. And the later it gets, the harder it becomes for a lead in delegates to be overcome, with fewer state contests remaining in which trailing candidates can attempt comebacks.”
I wrote about this impact of the Republican delegate
selection rules on August 11 in a blog post published in the Blue Nation Review on August 26.
If Trump survives the latest flap surrounding his tacit agreement with a birther at a post-debate event in New Hampshire – and it looks like he will – then he most likely will be the Republican nominee. Unless the Republicans coalesce around one or two powerful non-Trump alternatives (something that is not likely to occur), all he needs to do is to keep at 30-35% primary electorate support; he doesn't need to expand his support, he just needs to maintain what he now has. Only if state parties electing delegates after March 15 switch from winner-take-all to proportional representation delegate allocation schemes could he be stopped. But if state parties now make such changes, Trump clearly will view that as a breach of his “contract” with the Republican National Committee to agree to support the nominee. That would lead to a third-party run by Trump if he does not get the nomination.
The Clown Car is running into a ditch.
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